Buy Now
| Buy on |
|
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Aug 14, 2013Hobo Rocket will fit nicely, next to the rest of the nostalgic but new psychedelic records of 2013. Even though it is certainly spontaneous and short, the feeling of joy is intensified, even if it is for a moment.
-
MagnetAug 16, 2013Pond manages to use just about every trick in the psych-rock playbook to create energetic, borderline-unstable earworms that bury themselves deep in your brain for days. [No. 101, p.59]
-
Aug 5, 2013With Hobo Rocket, Pond once again step out from an ever-growing shadow to prove that they are far more than anyone's "other band."
-
Aug 5, 2013Pond’s fifth album, Hobo Rocket, bristles with unrestrained creativity and sonic exploration, while verging away from pastoral prog towards a harder garage blues slant.
-
Aug 2, 2013If mutant garage-psychedelia is your thing, then Aussie quintet Pond's Hobo Rocket should have your head spinning.
-
Aug 1, 2013Hobo Rocket is a genuinely believable, and extremely successful celebration.
-
UncutAug 1, 2013The terrific Hobo Rocket has many of the admirable assets that made BWD great, but there's a sense in the album's overall finesse that things as far as possible are being taken perhaps a little more seriously than hitherto. [Sep 2013, p.82]
-
Aug 12, 2013Hobo Rocket is definitely an overall fan-pleaser, and one that compensates for Beard, Wives, Denim by mutating its 'flower power' whimsy into an erratic display of mood swings and horror-show theatrics.
-
Sep 11, 2013This more lithe and economical album in many ways proves that Pond have taken a further step towards genuine maturity, but it does still seem rather thrown together and the result of a scattergun approach to both composition and arrangements.
-
Aug 9, 2013Like many psych-heavy records today, the album doesn’t say much lyrically. The lack of deep lyrical content is an easy detail to overlook due to Pond’s complex execution of instrumentation.
-
Aug 5, 2013Wide-eyed wonder still intact, there's a lot of depth to explore in the 30 minutes of Hobo Rocket, from bombastic glam, to chugging stoner rock, to colorful psychedelia--all of it odd as usual.
-
Aug 1, 2013The claustrophobia of recording on a farm in western Australia may have contributed to Beard, Wives Denim‘s concision, whereas Hobo Rocket is a more freewheeling response to modern psychedelia.
-
Aug 1, 2013The prolificacy is undoubted, and at times the quality is unequivocally intriguing. But with the tendency to occasionally experiment and deviate, consistency is not forthcoming; that said, when Pond hit the right notes they soar.
-
Aug 1, 2013Hobo Rocket may not be the band’s best album to date, especially in light of their super-tight standout Beard, Wives, Denim--but, if the question is whether its rough, shambolic sound makes you think it’d be completely off-the-chart in a live setting... absolutely yes it does, and that’s really the aim of it.
-
Q MagazineFeb 4, 2014It's a winningly demented mix of ADHD garage rock, wonky psychedelia and massive, foot-on-monitor guitar riffs. [Oct 2013, p.109]
-
Aug 8, 2013Pond still appreciate the glue of a hummable pop hook and the intoxicating pyschedelia of headphone tricks, but the most satisfying way to hear Hobo Rocket is turning it up as loud as it’ll go.
-
Aug 8, 2013Parts of the album feel too sloppy, too wayward, and too unfocused to really encourage repeated listens. When Pond tightens their sound, the cutting grooves are hard to ignore.
-
Aug 6, 2013Pond, for all the relative brevity of each track, makes Hobo Rocket sound as long as a double-album of old, and its model rests on gatefolds and Hipgnosis icons.
-
Aug 1, 2013It doesn't all hang together--sometimes there are just too many ideas jostling for supremacy and Aloneaflameaflowe gradually gets lost in a garage haze. They're at their best when they ease off and allow their psychedelic majesty to shine through.
-
Aug 7, 2013Hobo Rocket draws out the indulgence, more than happy to engage in dumb fun without bringing much to the party.
-
Aug 26, 2013The execution may be on point, but the personality is absent, the ideas are fewer, and the experience is all-up flat, no matter how raw and flashy the playing.
-
Aug 6, 2013Pond constantly struggle to find a balance between prog, classic yuppie rock and psychedelia in Hobo Rocket, cramming a cheat sheet of tired rock trappings and psychedelic clichés that were already fatigued even before corporate rock detoxified its very essence.
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 17 out of 18
-
Mixed: 0 out of 18
-
Negative: 1 out of 18
-
Aug 27, 2013
-
Sep 14, 2013